


Wanderlust

by hbxplain



Series: More Lives Than One [11]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), More Lives Than One, Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Finnaela Raegan's Backstory, Finnaela's POV, Finny Angst, Finny Loves The Crew, Gen, Kyle (mentioned), POV Third Person Limited, The Jailbreak, Written by Haven, inner monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 20:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbxplain/pseuds/hbxplain
Summary: Finny doesn't like to stand still, but she'd do it forever as long as they were beside her.





	Wanderlust

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! My friends and I run a DnD 5e campaign. We're on season 2, and we're slowly posting the transcripts (this can be found on wattpad on the account "Stormcause."). But we also like to write short stories about our characters in between sessions. I'm posting them here for organization's sake, and because I love the ao3 tagging system, it's so nice to look at and very helpful! I'm not sure if it'll actually work with custom unknown tags but here's to hoping it'll at least work for items within the series.
> 
> Massive spoiler alert for all of campaign one and up to Session Five of Season Two.

Finnaela Raegan does not like to stand still.

Instead, she likes to fidget with her fingers, and fiddle with her thumbs, and tap her feet, and see the world. This fascination with movement begins when she is very, very small.

She trusts some people. They make her regret that. She ends up having to find a new home.

Later, she is less small. She does not fit in with the people she stays with. She stops staying. She keeps going. People keep telling her to leave.

She meets a guy. He’s a jerk, honestly, but then he’s a father (kind of) and Finnaela has a son. She names him Neser, because Kyle can die mad.

For a long time, he is the only one who stays, and the only one _she_ stays _for. _

At some point, she genuinely enjoys moving around so much. It’s nice to see the world, and she almost craves the new sights once she’s been in one place for too long. But it’s… lonely. And she doesn’t want that for Neser.

She tries out to be part of a ship crew. She doesn’t fully understand what she’s signing up for when she signs up—mostly because AFA doesn’t hand out a whole lot of details—but she knows there’s an opening for an engineer, and engineering is one of the only two things she knows how to competently do.

She meets some people who are… nice enough. And they don’t immediately find something wrong with her.

But the AFA employees do.

She is made a deal. She will help with engineering and repair, but AFA doesn’t expect to need much of that once the final version of the ship is out. Her real function will be a failsafe for the others; she will give her life to save theirs, if and when the need arises.

Finny agrees because she doesn’t expect to stick around that long.

But she does. Neser loves these people right away, and, with time, Finny starts to feel the same. Suddenly—not so suddenly—these people, this crew, they’re her family. For once in her life, she does not want to leave.

_And no one asks her to._

It’s nice. In Furia, she sees who she was. In everyone, at times, she sees who she could be. Who she _wants _to be. And the best thing is… she’s getting there. Slowly but surely.

She will do anything to stay with these people. She will do even more to protect them.

It is a dark day when she no longer has her son beside her.

Finny misses Neser like she misses her old home, because she knows she can get neither back. There is a longing there, a fleeting wish that things had just been _different._ It is only because of her new family that she makes it through the loss at all.

They hop planes. It goes badly. They forget her, and it almost hurts worse than if they’d sent her away. She finally finds them, and they don’t trust her. They trust her less every time she speaks but she doesn’t know what she could possibly say that would make enough sense for things to be _okay _again.

Time passes so fast she can’t even keep track of the clock’s hands. She sees herself in visions and loops and barely recognizes the person she’s become. She isn’t sure if that’s good or bad.

A lot happens. She misses them, but she thinks they must have gotten back home. That’s good. She can’t blame them for that. She _can’t, _even if she tries at first. She ends up… happy for them. It’s the only thing that clicks in her mind after everything that’s happened; they deserve to be _home._

(Even if she doesn’t.)

She makes friends with this plane’s crew. Well—not quite a crew. These people weren’t accepted into AFA like her real crew were. She tries to paint her real crew in as good a light as she can, because she thinks they deserve that. Sometimes the fake crew believe her. Sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes they _really _don’t. Sometimes they get defensive in a way that both warms and aches her heart. She’s glad _someone _cares about her, but she’s overcome with guilt that that privilege comes at the cost of her family’s honored memory.

(She doesn’t know why she keeps thinking of them like they’re dead. They’re not (she hopes).)

She appreciates the fake crew. She likes them, cares for them, becomes the team mom all over again. But it’s not the same. They’re _different._

They’re not the family she yearns for.

She’s not even entirely sure how or why she and the fake crew got stuck here, nor does she care to think about it long enough to find out. She feels the exact same way about all the wild things going on inside this place.

It’s really weird, seeing copies of herself running around, trying to impersonate her and sometimes succeeding. Maybe this is how her family felt. Maybe this is how the fake crew felt. Maybe this is just how _she _feels, right now.

She touches one of her copies a total of one (1) time, and decides then and there that she ought not try it again. She barely makes it out that one time, but she can’t leave this godforsaken plane before she can warn the fake crew about these newfound consequences. She yanks herself back to reality and comes up with the simplest codeword she can manage, because they need some kind of system but there’s just no need for it to be complicated when everything else is already so much so.

It’s kind of hard to hang out when the rooms keep moving around. It’s almost fun, though, almost _reminiscent, _going through a doorway and finding something she might never have seen before, wondering immediately if the person in front of her is someone she knows, or just a trick of the light. Maybe she’s just starved for entertainment. She’s been here a year. It sucks a little.

Sometimes Neser makes a guest appearance. She doesn’t believe it’s really him; granted, he’s not technically her son, given the whole plane fiasco, but she still feels like she would… Well. Maybe she doesn’t know. He just feels _off _to her. It’s him, she thinks, or at least it used to be. He’s just… different. Different enough that she can’t in good conscience call him by the same name.

Her thoughts kind of go in circles now. Everything she thinks of doing, she knows she’s done before. She notes, silently, that the fake crew is picking up on this; they’re realizing she doesn’t have all the answers, and she never did, and she certainly never will. Not that she ever tried to convince them otherwise, but… she understands. She knows how easy it is to place your full trust in someone just because you’re so desperate for an answer—she knows it just as much as she knows how hard it is to trust anyone at all.

Honestly, Finnaela half expects the fake crew to turn tail and change the codeword as soon as they realize she’s not useful to them. But they seem to have found _something _useful in the mess that is her psyche, and they keep her around. More than that, actually: They treat her just as they always have. It’s odd. Part of her doesn’t know why she believes she deserves otherwise. Part of her is dead set on pushing them away.

She can’t even untangle her own thoughts. They’re just going in circles. They’re just going in _loops. _She shudders whenever the realization crosses her mind again.

The fake Erdan—and she never calls him that out loud, no, she would never, but it’s just so hard to let anyone take the old Erdan’s place in her heart—he tells her he’s seen a mouse running around, which is odd because the lifeforms in this place never seem to change except to copy the crew’s own forms, and the fake Cabhan doesn’t know wild shape.

(The fake crew used to ask her for tips, for tricks, for lessons. They wanted to grow as strong as her old crew had been. She started out trying her best to teach them what little she knew of each of her old teammate’s respective strengths, but then the similarities started to clash with the conflicts and it got to be too much. She can’t do that. She can’t change these people into the people she wants them to be, because they’re _not _those people. And Finny wouldn’t want that for them. She would want that for herself, maybe, but also maybe she’s had enough of being selfish and should just let the old crew _be. _Maybe she should finally stop clinging to their memory when she’s so sure they do not cling to hers. Maybe she should stop asking herself in crucial predicaments how Erdan would move, how Pariv would advise, how Cabhan would speak, how Furia would decide. Maybe it doesn’t matter as much as she feels like it does. She’s been wrong before, after all.)

(She’s been wrong _a lot.)_

So the fake Erdan asks her what that could possibly be about, and Finnaela doesn’t really have an answer but she wants to, so she waits. She waits and she watches and she only moves when she has to, when a copy catches their scent. She doesn’t know what she expects to find, but she knows she will find _something._

She gets split up from the fake Furia and Pariv and Erdan—she _has _to quit calling them that, they deserve better—and ends up with only the fake Cabhan, and they sit together and try to stay entertained when they wait for gods-know-what to show its face.

A Furia bursts into the room like she’s seen a ghost. She looks at Finny like she _is _seeing a ghost. Finny’s not sure what kind of bullcrap the guards at this place are on now, but she knows she’s not about to fall for it again.

(She still has nightmares about the first time she ‘fell for it.’ She’s so glad she yanked herself back. So glad she had a _reason _to yank herself back.)

“Finny!” the fake Furia calls, but all the fake crew always call her Fin, per her request.

“Code!” she shouts, jumping up, because she doesn’t buy this scam for a _second._

This Furia’s face takes on a shocked expression. “Uhhhhh.... okay uhhhh.... I-I found a book a few rooms ago that had your handwriting but I didn't flick through it so..."

Well, damn. That plan didn’t work. Finny guesses it’s about time the guards got smart.

She narrows her eyes all the same. “Yes, I imagine you wouldn't. Cabh,” she can’t keep avoiding their names like this she can’t she can’t- “if you could please try to find the others? Remember not to trust anyone who can't tell you the code. I'll take care of this.”

The fake Cabhan reluctantly goes and the weird Furia awkwardly watches, which is kind of out of character for the copies. Then the Furia suddenly blurts out, "We freaking went to purgatory, Finny! We were there for like, a year! And-and we got all our memories back and then Mary came and we got out with the ship and then we found Anla and we heard that you were here and- and..."

Okay, so that’s new. Finnaela doesn’t think she can really ignore that. The copies generally try to stick to what their creators know to be true, after all; they rarely make up their own stories.

Finny bites her lip and looks side to side. There aren’t any other copies around yet. And anyway, this is a Furia, not a Finny—Finny can’t be in _that _much danger, right? She sighs and sits back down. "God damn it. Admittedly, I haven't heard that one before. Okay, come on, sit!" And she gestures to the table in front of her.

"What do you mean?" the Furia asks, but she instantly goes back to speaking almost too quickly for Finnaela to understand. "Oh! The guys are here too, Pariv and Erdan and Cabhan and all them, we're breaking you all out! But we gotta move quickly, um, things might get pretty bad pretttty quickly."

Finny taps her foot anxiously and glances side to side. Still no one else around. Damn it, she doesn’t know what to _do. _The copies have staged ‘rescue attempts’ dozens of times, and she’s never fallen for it, not once, but this time… This time she _wants _to. Not only does this seem different, somehow, but also—she’s just so tired. She’s so tired of trying and failing to forget Them, she’s so tired of using Their memory to calm herself down, she’s so _tired _of being _nothing _and feeling so strongly that They have always been _everything._

The fake crew tried to make her hate the real one. Not in a jealous way, or a mean-spirited one, but- Well, she tried to follow their lead. She knows anything must be better than _this, _than stubbornly holding on to something she has no right to hold on to. But it’s impossible to hate them because they’re the only people she can ever remember _loving, _besides Neser, and it’s too tall an order and she just can’t. She just can’t hate them and, damn it, you know what?

Maybe she _wants _to believe they remember her back.

Just for a moment.

"Okay, okay, I- God, please don't be lying,” she says, almost begging, and she can’t help it. She knows, rationally, logically, objectively, that this is definitely not the Real Furia. But she _wants _it to be, god, she _wants _it. “Please don't be another of them, this is the worst," and she hates this! She hates not knowing, she hates thinking she knows and then second-guessing herself, she hates begging and pleading and spilling her heart out into the arms of what is, more likely than not, a being created only to use her. She tilts her head up suddenly because she’s _better _than this, she _has _to be, and she tries her best to look more composed. "Apologies. If you are truly who you say, then guide me." And she prepares to get her soul sucked into the Aether again, or whatever the hell happened last time.

"Who is ‘them’, Finny?" the Furia asks, but then she shakes her head and starts to leave the cell, and Finny is saved from having to answer.

The Furia stops nervously at the edge of the cell, like she’s uncertain. Like she’s _lost. _Finnaela fights the urge to just absolutely and unequivocally _lose her shit _on account of how hopelessly hopeful she’s becoming.

“You… don’t know where to go?” she asks, narrowing her eyes, because she still has _some _suspicion.

"I... kinda just trusted Erdan to-" She turns to Finny and pulls out a cell stone. "If I use these to call him, will they be tracked?"

Finnaela feels faint. The copies have never been able to reproduce any of the special planar items before, never once, and this Furia just… pulls it out like it’s nothing. Surely a copy would make more of a show of it, right? Surely they’d want to make _sure _Finny saw the new tech, so they’d have the best chance at tricking her?

Finny is _not _equipped for this, this is _not _what she expected waking up today. She’s almost relieved, and that seems to be the first thing she feels, but then she’s not even sure what she’s relieved _about _or _of, _because _why _would the real Furia be here? What would be the reasoning for _that _miracle? Finny _knows _the crew wasn’t happy with her when everything ended. Things were shaky _at best, _and, as optimistic as she tries to appear, she’s too much of a pessimist to take the world ‘at best.’

But then the alternative is that this _is _just a fancy copy, and that definitely makes more sense but then how would Finny handle that? How? She doesn’t think she can land on her feet again if this is just another trick that sends her falling.

What if it _is _the real Furia? What if, by some wild string of miracles, Furia is not only capable of saving her but is also _willing _to, and is now halfway to succeeding and getting her out? Would that be better? What will Finny _say? _Will she apologize? She has so many apologies ready, but suddenly, she doesn’t think any of them could ever be enough. When, even, would she have the time? She can’t imagine it will be an easy ride back if and when this Furia gets her out, and what if she doesn’t have _time _to decide on an apology, or what if the air is just too tense and she gets caught up and can’t speak, or what if she thinks too much and the words never make it past her throat, or what if she starts to panic and stutter like she _always _does and everything is just _ruined _because it makes it finally sink in for the crew that they were really, _really _better off without her for this past year?

Finny guesses it’s better to be alone outside of a prison than in one. And, regardless, she’ll still have the fake crew for _at least _a while, while they decide where to go and how best they can leave her behind.

"Wait, you- you have a- Surely this can't be- And you-“ Her stutter is back and worse than ever, and, god damnit, she thought that was getting better. “I realize this means nothing at all, but you swear to me that you're not a new version of the copies?" she asks desperately.

"Copies of what? Of- of us? I mean, that would make sense ‘cause I saw Pariv in a cell but that's not my Pariv cause he's somewhere else breaking people out, so-" Furia shakes her head. "I don't know, we gotta get out, come on, I'm pretty sure I can track my first path. Uhhh… can we leave that Cabhan behind or should we wait or what?"

Finny curses. "Damn it, I sent him off- No, I'm not leaving him. He was there when-" She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head. _He was there when you weren’t. _"Please. We can't leave him. And to answer your question... I don't think they can track your stone."

Furia heads off, calling Erdan (the real Erdan!?), and apparently it goes through because she’s going to find him, and, damn it, Finny’s going to help. So she does, as best she can, and she notices as she leads the way that Furia has her bow ready and rearing behind her, watching her back, and that feels _right, _holy shit, it feels so right.

Finny didn’t think she’d get to _feel _this again.

Suddenly, Erdan runs straight into her, and she immediately knows it’s him because he touches her and she doesn’t feel like she’s burning away. But there’s a Cabhan behind him and he stumbles and reaches for Erdan’s shoulder like he’s going to steady himself but Finny _knows _that trick, and, Erdan’s probable anger be damned, she grabs Erdan’s arm and yanks him behind herself.

"Code!" she barks out, and the Cabhan freezes.

"...Red?" he tries, and she decks him.

She and Furia warn Erdan once the Cabhan is no longer an issue, and then Erdan says Pariv and Cabhan are in trouble, and, instinctively, she asks, "The real-?” She clears her throat. "_Your _Cabhan and Pariv?"

_“Our _Cabhan and Pariv,” Furia says, and Finny will _not _cry over this reunion. She won’t, damn it!

“Yes, Finny, it is us,” Erdan says, and it’s so purely _him _that Finny almost screams. “It has been too long, but we are here.”

Is she dreaming? God, she hopes she’s not.

They find the fake Cabhan and meet up with the fake Furia and Erdan, and Finny huffs when she sees the fake Pariv isn’t with them like he was _last _time she saw them.

"Where the hell is Pariv!?" Finny asks breathlessly, and the fake Furia gives her an "I don't know, not my problem!' kind of shrug, except that Finny thinks it is _definitely _her problem, and she’s about to kick her ass about it.

She makes an angry noise but moves on anyway. “Okay, too bad. We’ll come back for him. Or- _I_ will. Where are we going?”

They tell her that the real Pariv is downstairs, and he needs their help and it physically hurts Finny to leave the fake Pariv behind but god _dammit _she can’t lose the real one again when she hasn’t even gotten him back yet.

She runs into Cabhan—literally—on the stairs. She doesn’t think her brain is really catching up with the situation well enough, because she manages to take it in stride somehow.

Then there’s Pariv, alive and well and kicking ass, and then Furia grabs her hand, probably to teleport but Finny is just so happy to receive any sort of affection, intended or otherwise. And Pariv turns and sees her and his jaw drops and all she can manage is a shrug and a “Nice to see you again.”

They start to teleport but Pariv takes a determined step back because he doesn’t want to leave his planar counterpart behind, and, god, that’s so _like _him, Finny is in _awe. _But hell if she’s gonna leave him here alone, and hell if the others are, too, apparently, because then _none _of them are teleporting and Pariv tries to be all self-sacrificing which Finny finds so delightfully familiar, as troubling as it can be, and Furia says “screw you” and runs after him which fits her just as well and Finny is just. She’s just.

Honestly, she had made peace with the idea that there simply wasn’t a timeline in which she both lived _and _got a happy ending.

But this seems a lot like both.

They’re running towards where Furia recalls seeing the fake Pariv, and Pariv suddenly says “Hey, Finny! I missed you!”

“Oh, I- Yes, I missed you, too, Pariv!” she laughs.

They find the fake Pariv, who Finny _really _ought to think of a better inner name for, and then they teleport back—back to a place Finny has never been, actually, and that’s more than a little jarring.

Wherever they are, it’s well put together, and Finny has one niggling treacherous thought that, oh my god, what if they never even left the plane? What if they never got home, what if they’ve been stuck here all year, and they’re just now bothering to care about her? But the thought is gone as fast as it’s come. Anla appears out of nowhere and rams into Finny with a hug, and Finny kneels a little to hug her better, because she _did _miss Anla, she really did, and she has a whole lot of apologies for Anla, too.

But Pariv looks like he expects a thousand guards to suddenly jump out of the woodworks, so Finny pats Anla’s back and gently pushes her aside to get to him.

“I blocked our signal,” she says softly. There’s no way they were tracked. “We’re safe.”

Pariv relaxes a little, and Finny notices that Furia stands a little closer to him than she used to. Finnaela is suddenly struck with this uncontrollable joy, because it was so _hard _seeing them fight amongst themselves when they didn’t remember her and, much more _pressingly, _didn’t remember _each other. _It was so hard to watch them snap and yell at each other when she had been so used to seeing them move as one, and now…

It seems like they’ve found that one-ness again.

Pariv does a cool thing with the remains of his spirits spell, and Furia whispers “That’s cool.”

Before Finny can register that that comment wasn’t meant for her ears, she echoes, _“Very _cool.”

And then immediately regrets it.

“Ehm- Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude!” she blurts quickly, stepping back, because they may have found their one-ness again but that does _not _mean she is intended to be a part of it.

But Furia is grinning, and Pariv is smiling at them both, and their expressions dim a little when she steps away, like—dare she say it—like they wanted her to stay.

And before she can entirely pick apart the many emotions that gives her, Pariv slams forward and picks her and Furia both up into a big ol’ bear hug, with, specifically, a strength check of 25. She lets out a surprised ‘oof’ but almost instantly relaxes, and she can’t help the small, grateful sniffles that escape her. Pariv’s wings fold around them both, and Finny can’t imagine a happier ending than this.

“That is a wonderful sight,” Erdan says softly from the side, and Furia pokes her head out just to yell.

“Erdan, come on!”

“Always room for the chief!” Pariv says, and Finny doesn’t understand what that means but she thinks that someday she might.

Cabhan is suddenly in front of them all, directing a young-ish elven boy around Pariv’s age, and Finny tilts her head from within The Hug.

“I have a son now,” Cabhan says simply.

“Uh- wow. I’m going to need to be caught up,” she says, and she _loves _it.

While Cabhan joins the hug, Furia leans over to whisper to her, and Finnaela tilts her head again. “Yeah. And, um…” Furia trails off. “I’d like your help with something later.”

Finny is _honored._

“Anything, Furia.”

“Oh my god!” Pariv suddenly shouts. “I need to add you to the tribe!”

Finny must not be hiding her confusion well enough. She’s trying not to hide her absolute elation, either.

“We have a _lot _to talk about,” Pariv confirms, and then he does what she thinks he might describe as “winking at the camera.”

And it’s perfect.


End file.
